XMen Rising Part One 'Birds of a Feather'
by Randirogue
Summary: Heinous plans ignite due to consequences of Stryker's attack on mutants with Cerebro. Introduces Remy, Beast, Betsy, Warren & many other canon characters. “Redemption is a luxury only granted to those whose prosecutors believe them deserving it.” SeePart2
1. Chapter 1 of 4

**AUTHOR NOTES (please read):**

**Re: The story.**  
I'm reworking my movieverse story ideas YET AGAIN. However, I've split the ideas into 'Parts.' Part One of this is complete before I even posted it. How often I upload the individual chapters of Part One will depend on the volume of responses to each posted chapters. Part One is only Four chapters long, but they are long, dense chapters.

Post X2, does not include anything regarding (the upcoming) X3. I actually wrote all of Part One and sketched out the entire plot of all of its following parts quite soon after X2 came out, and before information of X3 specifications were released.

It introduces Remy, of course (why won't they include him in the movies already!), as well as a slew of other canon characters, both friends and foes of the X-Men. Part One, here, sets the stage for the rest of it's parts, so it introduces, gets the blood pumping and the adrenalyn rushing, and just when you don't want it to stop, it'll settle down, call for a pause, a breather, and that will be the end of Part One. BUT, it's not the end of the story. Part Two is already on it's way. Here's hoping I finish it before ya'll finish this Part.

Of course, that doesn't mean you should wait to read this one until the next one comes out. :P Feedback is what will feed my motivation to get the next parts out. So, if you want them, let me know.**  
**

**Re: The Footnotes.  
**I've researched specific images of places and things I specify in this story. I've also made pics based on images from this story. Both were enormously helpful assistance for writing this. But, besides that, while writing, I added the pics directly into the story, and I found that it added a richness, lushness, that I couldn't attain otherwise.

You don't have to see them in order to enjoy the story. However, if you'd like to, I will make links available to you. The link will be at the end of every chapter, like a footnote. The corresponding number will be in parenthesis in the location that I intended them in the story. With the link in the footnote, I will include a sentence (where appropriate), so that you are reminded of what it correlates, and so you do not have to search back through the fic at the end to remember.

**Re: My Incomplete Stories.**  
The Movieverse stories that are incomplete are for all purposes, abandoned. Bits and pieces of them made their way into this one, though, so I hope you enjoy their evolution. :winks:

"Callous," "Seether," and the works of my other (not so secret anymore) penname are on a lengthy hiatus because of real life issues. This story snuck it's way in a while ago and well, I figured I might as well get it up. It's also not nearly as dense or complicated as my Evo and Comic based fics, so it's not as time consuming to work on, and thus, a bit easier to squeeze into my schedule.

I WILL one day finish "Callous" and "Seether" (and the last two 'novels' planned for the trilogy, for which "Seether" is the first 'novel') and "Toujours" (under my alternate penname). I hope you can hold out for them. ooo

Thank you.

Randi

**P.S.** I don't own the X-Men, obviously. If I could've submitted this for use for X3, and thus been able to profit from it legally, I would've, but that is not within my reach, so I share it here in hopes you'll enjoy it just the same.

* * *

(1) 

**X-MEN RISING**

**Part One  
'Birds of a Feather'**

**  
Chapter One**

Ripples graced the calm water. Not waves exactly, but a surface etched and embossed enough to give the sense that it contained life that could stir and rise at any moment, that a potential waiting to be released, faint at first, only a shadow really, that honed, refined, illuminated, burned its way up, up, up. It surged closer, closer, and closer toward the etched glassy brink to finally break through!

However, it didn't burst through and snatch its nearest prey. The nearing thing wasn't a rising at all, but rather its mirrored opposite, a dipping from above, a controlled dive. A reflection. It matched Warren Worthington's skilled pitch and yaw as he skimmed a foot above The Lake in New York City's Central Park. Unlike the moonlight glittering the miniscule peaks of the ripples, Warren's reflection faded obligatorily as he lifted over The Angels of the Water Fountain and then the tops of the trees beyond (2). Seconds later he soared over the thick of the 843 acres—far southwest of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a bit northwest of the Children's Zoo—and that's when he finally really dared cut loose.

He performed a sort of corkscrew-loop as he passed over his favorite spot, Christopher Fratin's sculpture "Eagles and Prey" in the Mall's Literary Walk (3). Though Central Park commissioners thought the statue would be a natural fit, others thought the fierce depiction of two birds of prey attacking a goat trapped between two rocks violated the tranquility of the park itself. Warren, conversely, thought it was evocative and provocative. The sight of it always made him want to bust out of his shirt and take flight. It made him feel alive.

Was there really any wonder as to why?

He stretched his wings their full span. It almost felt like he was floating in space, gliding silkily as he was while admiring the jeweled sky. It wasn't as good a view as it was in the sparsely populated shores of Muir Island, but then New York offered it's own fineries too. One of those fineries was waiting on the balcony of his penthouse apartment right then.

Another good stretch of his wings and then—WOOSH—he dove for his final time that night. The wind whistled past his ears, stung his eyes, and chilled the vast array of white feathers on his wings. The ground zoomed closer and closer and closer…

Lift, bend, flap, flap, flap, flap.

He gracefully touched down on his balcony and wrapped his arms and wings around the sharp delicacy that was Elizabeth 'Betsy' Braddock. Some unique fall of her father's royal British blood and her mother's celebrated Asian legacy gave the former model fine black hair that was tinged purple rather than the rich electric blue common of color of that rich ilk. Or maybe it was just a sign of her being a mutant.

Betsy leaned back into his Armani clothed embrace. She relished how the clean scent of expensive cologne mingled with the faint sheen of sweat from flying that signified _him_ in her mind. She inhaled deep as she could and released it, a sigh of champagne pleasure. She rubbed her cheek against his wings and fully enjoyed the dichotic sensation of the feathers—some downy soft, yet others bristly stiff.

"Some girls get furs," she purred to him, "but you give me wings."

He planted a kiss above her ear and squeezed her tighter to him.

"I love you, Betsy, but…" he said with a chuckle that let her detect the acrid-sweet odor of the champagne lingering on his breath as well, "I won't give up my wings so you can have a swanky coat."

She broke from his hold and swatted his arm playfully.

He laughed. "Did you expect any less from a pompous, industrialist playboy?"

She raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow to that. Turning her back to him she said, "Good thing I'm an heiress to my own fortune then."

His amusement rumbled against her back in time with its resonance in her ear. It was even more palpable in her mind, thanks to her gift. A few lavender butterflies, ethereal and delicate, flitted about in front of her. She shivered a little in the breeze and drew him tighter around her.

"But will it be enough to keep us safe?"

"Change your mind about seeing—"

"No." It was firm. The butterflies scattered and faded away. "It's been almost six weeks, Warren. I'm fine."

"But Moira said—"

"Take me flying, Warren," Betsy interjected brightly as she spun to face him. Her eyes sparkled with glee. He loved that sparkle. Unfortunately, it wasn't the only thing alight right then.

"Too risky," Warren said with a glance at the rising sun. "Lets go inside." He bit back the '_and hide_.'

* * *

Irene's delicate aged hands raised the window.

"Better?" Xavier asked.

Retaking her seat, Irene smiled knowingly and said, "It _will_ be."

Xavier took a sip of his hot tea as he watched her grope the chess pieces before finally completing her move. Outside, a bird fluttered onto a nearby branch.

Having heard the bird, Irene asked, "Ever wonder what it'd be like to fly?"

"Landing would be quite difficult, I imagine," he answered. He lifted his hand from the armrest of his wheelchair and took his turn.

"I wouldn't advise that move," Irene told him. She sipped her iced tea.

"But is your not-so-subtle suggestion to my favor or yours?"

"Touché."

Humor, amusement, and the mingling of his East coast scholarly refinement with her southern gentility tempered the severity of their conversation like a supple glove easing over Rogue's poisoned skin. Still, Xavier completed the move he was originally intending.

"I was too subtle previously," Irene said with some remorse. Xavier wasn't sure if her remorse was for the return to the topic or simply the topic itself. Either way, he listened as she continued; "I was at the Museum of Natural History the day of your field trip. Jean gleamed my visions. She had as much success at deciphering them as I did when I first had them."

"These warnings of yours—" Xavier smiled when she interrupted him. He knew it would goad her.

"Not merely warnings, Charles." No quaver of voice or jerky gesture signified her irritation, but a graceful withered hand retrieved a lesser-aged leather journal. "Destiny," she said simply in continuation of her counter. "The traitor will not be so easy to discover."

Her sight more vivid whilst her eyes were closed, even behind the dark glasses she wore, Irene idly traced fingertip circles on the cover of the journal. "The bird comes home to roost. The solitaire leash fractures allegiances." She traced a diamond shape. "I've heard said a diamond is forever." She traced another circle.

Xavier laughed. "Suitably cryptic and melodramatic until the tag line for an engagement ring advertisement."

"Ironic you should say that." Suddenly aware of the circle tracings, she lifted her hand from the journal. Her expression tightened and she took a calming sip of tea.

* * *

Scott solemnly watched a news program on the television. On it, a reporter stood before the white house.

"…confirmed McCoy missing. McCoy failed to accompany Dr. Essex to the first conference of Senator Kelly's Mutant Good Will Research Committee. Accusations and suspicions are more rampant than when the President first appointed McCoy, a mutant, to—"

An intruding bustle of laughter and hissed shushes almost made the still mourning Scott smile. "They're at it again," he thought, as Bobby, Kurt, Kitty, Rogue, and Jubilee huddled near the doorway in anticipation of their frequent mission: sneak up and scare the professor. Their latest series of attempts involved the tactical use of Rogue as the guinea pig… stool pigeon… culprit.

Piotr, also known as Colossus, who was watching the news program as well, but from a nearby plush chair, turned and watched as well. He had slightly different reasons for the change in his attention than Scott did.

Kitty phased her head through the wall and peaked in on Xavier. "He's distracted with that old lady."

"This has to work!" Jubilee exclaimed.

Kitty clamped a hand over Jubilee's mouth. "Shh!"

"It will work," Bobby said. "Kitty's way was too slow, he had time to read us all while we watched."

"But my power," Nightcrawler interjected in mischievous pride, "is instantaneous."

Rogue took off her glove and reached for Nightcrawler's face. She hesitated.

"Go ahead, Rogue," Nightcrawler reassured her. "It's all in good fun."

"So long as I don't grow a tail." Her hand slipped forward and… contact. Rogue jerked with the rush of power, energy… and memories.

* * *

_Inside the Alkali Lake base, I struggle uselessly against my binds, unsure of what is about to occur. The sound of quiet footfalls on damp concrete, breathing nearing my ear, a hand on my shoulder braces its owner, a haughty southern chuckle precedes its bearer's voice…_

"_A scientist I may not be, Dr. Essex, but I don't need you hovering over my work like a—"_

_Hisssss!_

_It burns like acid as it drizzles and sizzles onto the sensitive patch of skin on the back of my neck._

"—_nervous hen." The hand removes itself from my shoulder and takes the voice further away with it. "The President has a tight foothold on that arena all on his own. No, I don't think I need you prattling details to him. He knows all he needs to know about my little project here."_

_The pat on my shoulder makes me flinch, but when his voice dances along my ear with his breath, I can't help but relax._

"_Remove him," he tells me quietly._

_BAMF! I grab the Doctor from behind. BAMF! To the immense surprise of his pilot, I deposit him in his helicopter. BAMF! I am gone._

_

* * *

_

Rogue, a little stunned, lost skin-to-skin contact with Nightcrawler and he slumped unconscious to the floor. She was not the only one shocked to see him pass out. It was only a small touch.

"You okay, Rogue?" Bobby asked.

Rogue shook her head clear. "I…I'm… Yeah, I'm fine."

"Sure?" Kitty asked.

Rogue painted on a smile. "No problem. I only touched him for a second."

Jubilee urged, "Then Go! Go!"

"You have hard times ahead," Irene was saying. "I do not envy you."

* * *

"We have hard times behind us too," Xavier said with knowing confidence. "Hope is feeble if not for the launch pad of our trials to springboard it."

Her fingers fluttered at the edge of the journal. "Redemption is a luxury _only_ granted to those whose prosecutors believe them _deserving_ it."

Xavier twitched a faint smile as he nodded acknowledgement of her trump. She petted the cover of the journal one last time before passing it over to him.

BAMF! Black acrid smoke billowed and swirled at Xavier's back.

A smile, a nod to the opened window, and he said, "Ms. Adler, this is Rogue."

"Dang it!" Rogue laughed and sidled up to Xavier's side. She took a quick measuring glance at his unfamiliar visitor. "I almost had you that time."

Encouraging her experimenting with her abilities, he said, "Next time, try a combination of borrowed powers. It is harder to 'read' your thoughts when you've absorbed multiple people."

Xavier catches the stillness that overcomes Irene and asked, "You know each other?"

"No," Rogue said uncomfortably.

Irene graced him with her own knowing smile. "Not traditionally." She stood. "They didn't heed my warnings—" she quirked a grin at playing with his previous statement "—about that ridiculous plan to mutate the world leaders at the UN summit. Let's hope they listen better this time."

"You won't be staying, then?"

"You have that," Irene said, indicating the journal she gave him. "Perhaps you'll have more success interpreting it than we have. You'll hear from me if there's a change in the pattern."

"I understand," Xavier said, his voice tinged with remorseful acceptance. Turning to Rogue, he said, "Assist Ms. Adler to the door, Rogue."

Irene unfolded her walking stick and held her hand out for Rogue.

"Guess the sunglasses aren't just a fashion statement, huh?" Rogue asked.

"No more than your gloves are for you." Irene's words were kind, but they still picked at Rogue's scabbing wounds. Rogue's pause was miniscule, but more than enough for someone so reliant on touch to view the world as Irene was.

Recovering with practiced, callusing ease, Rogue led her out of the room and past the game room. She rebounded the topic back to Irene when she asked, "Anything like Scott's?"

Irene shook her head then said, "Tiresias has nothing on me."

"You can see the future?"

"You got the reference." Just like Irene knew. "Smart girl."

"Oedipus was the last assignment before Jean…" Rogue quickly changed the subject. "Is that how you recognized me? Your powers?"

"You've made your appearances, yes," Irene said before grabbing Rogue's rising arm, before stopping Rogue from reaching for the front door's handle.

Rogue glanced at Irene's hand on her upper arm. It was dangerously close to bare skin. In fact, the edge of her hold synchs perfectly with the edge of the long glove. Mesmerized, Rogue looks Destiny in the face.

"The white stripes are becoming of you," Irene foretells.

A quiet exhale.

"He finds them fetching."

"Who?" Rogue asked.

The door whipped open, startling Rogue. It missed her by mere inches. If Irene had not stopped her from grabbing the door handle, the door surely would have smacked her.

Two rambunctious kids ran past muttering apologies in their wake. Collision avoided threefold.

Rogue looked from the kids to the door then to Irene, who apparently caught the door before it closed as she was holding it open. Rogue smirked. "You knew."

"The closer the event, the more accurate the precognition. The farther away… The possible outcomes I see can run to the thousands, more even. It's rare to find them in agreement, but it does happen every now and then. For instance, he's drawn to you in every strain."

Bobby leaned out from the game room and called to Rogue. "We finally got Scott away from the TV. You up for a movie, Rogue?"

"I'll be there in a minute, Bobby." Rogue's eyes sparkled with amusement. Again, she faced Destiny directly. "My very own fated prince charming, you say?"

Irene glanced at Bobby then back to Rogue. "You don't always give him the benefit of the doubt, though. Remember that."

"I don't doubt Bobby," she said as she caught sight of her own reflection in Irene's dark glasses.

Irene smiled warmly, sympathetically… reassuringly. "No, you don't. But he isn't as honest as you think, either." A questioning look from Rogue prompted Irene to add, "Nothing so serious that it can't wait until after you retrieve the good Doctor McCoy from Seattle."

"Wait, you know where—"

"And now you do. Make haste, Rogue. Tomorrow will be too late."

Rogue stared after Destiny as she left. Something hardening inside her whispered that she really needed to stop doing that. Something softer reminded her that it hurt either way, staying or running, so what would it matter. It was destined, after all.

The breeze through the door brought the scent of brimstone still lingering on her clothes. Kurt's teleportation powers reeked of it. It was that black acrid smoke. It was the scent of rescue.

She gives the door a detached shove and it closes. The dark wood, was tinged a dark red, but not as red as Jean's hair, filled her view. A richer burning hue than it had filled Jean's eyes with power. It was the color of rescue.

"Rogue?" Bobby asked at her side. "You look spooked. What did she say?"

A twist of her head didn't save Bobby's ears from her hollering, "Professor!"

* * *

_First Drafted July 03, 2004 (perhaps earlier)_._  
Rewrite/Edit April 11, 2005  
Rewrite/Edit April 22, 2006

* * *

** Footnotes (links to pictures):**_

(1) www(dot)deviantart(dot)com/deviation/32362021  
Front page 'Poster' for "X-Men Rising." Making it really helped me solidify my intentions, themes, and plot for this story.

(2) www(dot)easynewyorkcity(dot)com/centralpark/13angelsofwater(dot)jpeg  
Warren flies over this in the opening paragraphs of this chapter. "Angel of the Waters" fountain was sculpted by Emma Stebbins and unveiled in New York's famed Central park in the area called 'Bethesda Terrace' in 1873. It's mention in this story is purposeful for theme and immagery.

(3) www(dot)easynewyorkcity(dot)com/centralpark/13eagles(dot)jpeg  
Warren flies over this in the opening paragraphs of this chapter. "Eagles and Prey" is a bronze statue created by artist Christopher Fratin. The sculpture was placed in New York City's famed Central Park in 1863. It can be viewed in the park's 'literary walk.' It will reappear in my story. It has multiple relevances for themes of the story in general as well as that of the characters Warren Worthington III, Rogue, and Jean.

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_Thank you for indulging._


	2. Chapter 2 of 4

I have no willpower, so I'm updating this li'l bugger already.

Those of you that have read my previous movieverse fic will recognize some parts in this chapter. However, DO NOT skim those parts. I've tweaked them significantly in ways that directly pertain to only this story and the themes and purposes and intentions, pertaining to THIS story.

As with all my writing, every word is picked specifically. Don't fret if you don't see the connections up front, just hang on for the ride, but also, don't discount anything as filler whatsoever.

**RebelRogue127:** I'm so glad to hear you are enjoying it. These are some of my fave characters too, which is why I have to use them. I'm not neglecting my not-so-fave characters though, either, and I promise to treat them all as if they were my faves, so I can prevent alienating their fans. My favorite aspect of the X-Treme story was the use of Destiny's Diaries. I always thought they would've shared more insider information regarding why they would convince a somewhat poor-example-of-motherly-love terrorist such as Mystique to take in Rogue than they did. But then, that's what I try to tap into in "Seether." Speaking of "Seether," if you like plots utilizing Vargas, that story is a good place to go. I look forward to seeing your comments.

Ahem... enough whoremongering of my other stories.

Onto chapter two of X-Men Rising, Part 01 "Birds of a Feather."

(Don't forget to check out the links to the pics, either, please:D)

**

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**

**Chapter Two**

"Why didn't she just tell _you_?" Ororo asked. Her distrust was blatant.

Xavier smiled wryly. "She had her reasons, I imagine."

He was in Cerebro, speaking via a communications system on intercom. Storm was in the pilot's seat of the Blackbird already running the pre-flight sequence.

Kurt, already strapped in his seat, could hear them, but wasn't listening. He whispered rhythmic phrases in his native Germanic tongue under his closed eyes and bowed head.

Paying closer attention was Rogue. Donning a flight jacket as an accessory of her uniform, she passed by Scott, who was setting up the holograph for the team's briefing.

Storm spotted her. "Rogue, could you—"

"Already on it," Rogue said as she started checking some of the lesser controls. Rogue had begun basic pilot training shortly after the Alkali lake incident. Xavier thought it a good idea that she _actually_ learned how to fly before she got behind the controls again.

"Is this a training session or a rescue mission?" Logan asked with a gruff grunt as he took his seat as well. Though he often denied it in a very Logan way, he had become a mite bit more protective of Rogue—and some of the other kids too—since Jean's death.

Two of those other kids were sitting around him waiting for what was to come with the virgin nervous eagerness of their _first time_. Though Kitty had been used previously for covert operations, they were of more controlled and less risky nature than this mission was anticipated to be. Fiddling with the collar and cuffs of her uniform, she was a vibrant thing, fluttering and wispy as a ghost so near corporeal form, but not near enough. She wondered if her fellow 'newbies' to the 'official team' were as nervous as she. They'd both been in much more dire situations with the team before, sure, but this was still their trial run on an actual, real, legit _X-Men_ mission.

Bobby, seemingly calm and steady beside Kitty, gazed in quiet wonder at his busy girlfriend as she assisted Storm. Rogue shone brightly to him. The passionate person she was to become was emerging slowly while he still seemed stuck in his shiny-and-new refinement. More and more often he caught glimpses of her coming-to-bear—like rubbed off patches of an abrasive polish designed to buffer, make resilient, and gleam. Her equally burgeoning dichotomy—tough/durable and ardent/audacious—conjured a dual reaction in him. It raced his pulse, heady and throbbing in that teenage way, and quickened his breath, hesitant and doubting as a geeky kid about to insert a pin in a frantic butterfly's wing so he could prove his worth to his teacher at the science fair. What hope did he have of containing such a wild and free thing? How temporary was his grasp of her when her touch was so startling? She was too tempting for him not to try, yet too frightening for him to risk himself wholly. Like this mission they were embarking on, his approach was collected and reserved. It was a failsafe of his to press the stretchy-give of his nimbus confines only so much. He'd been in Xavier's midst longer than Rogue, but he wasn't emerging quite as quickly as she was. For that matter, even Kitty, in her own way, was more experienced and ambitious than he.

"All ready?" Storm called back from the pilot's seat.

Rogue tapped a button and the ramp rose and sealed shut. "That's a go, Storm." Rogue confirmed before she took her seat with Bobby, Logan and the others. Still a rookie as pilots-in-training go, she had a guilty-pleasure love of using pseudo-pilot lingo.

Scott bypassed any further possible chitchat with the activation of the three-dimensional holographic display of—"Seattle," he informed them stoically.

The 3D image collapsed with the sound of a falling rush of beads, and then sprang up again, this time, a closer view of a high security building. Another collapse, shuffle, and reformation, and the view was close enough that the display illustrated razor wire topped fencing.

"The Diamond Research Facility," Scott continued, "headed by Dr. Essex, the very scientist that was assigned as McCoy's partner for the Mutant Good-will Research Committee."

A side section of the holograph collapsed, reshuffled, and reformed, this time into the face of the very mutant—not that the public was aware he was one—their mission was to save. Dr. Henry 'Hank' McCoy wore thick black-rimmed glasses that would've been Buddy Holly like if they weren't so small on his face. His mop of dark hair crowned the wide round face atop bulky, stocky shoulders. He gave the impression of being gorilla like, but with an air of the delicate, the cultured, to him. An odd mix to be sure. More odd to those who heard him speak. The voice and word pattern never quite meshed with that face, that body.

The team didn't have time to speculate on that too much before Scott continued.

"With Cerebro's help, the Professor has determined that there are mutants detained in cells on the north end of the complex."

Collapse. Reshuffle. Reform. The north end appeared in muted detail. Collapse. Reshuffle. Reform. A hallway. Barred doors. An interior view.

"This is the closest approximation of Dr. McCoy's location we have."

Bobby piped up, "You couldn't get a lock on him, Professor?"

"There is significant interference with my telepathy there." Professor's voice sounded the tiniest bit tinny through the speakers.

"It could be a trap."

"That is a possibility, Logan," Xavier admitted ruefully. "This is to be first and foremost a reconnaissance mission. If you can use stealth—" Kitty and Kurt nodded as if he'd physically gestured to them "—to release some of the mutant captives, then do so. Otherwise, we will reconvene and determine a more precise plan."

"But she said tomorrow—"

"She is employed by Magneto, Rogue," Xavier said.

Rogue's entire body thrummed tightly hearing that name. Oh how she wanted to get her hands on him!

"Caution is imperative," Xavier stated as the doors sealed him inside the big round room. "I will monitor from Cerebro."

* * *

Irene turned on the light for her watchful companions, not needing it herself, but only after she situated herself comfortably in her favorite high back chair in her own meager apartment's living room. If her private quarters could qualify as an apartment, that was.

"How did it go?" Erik Lensherr's commanding presence rode his voice, a low brewing rumble of a jet engine just lifting.

"Rogue doesn't exhibit as much of your imprinted unyielding as I would have expected."

Open. Flicker. Shut. Laughter. "She took the bait, didn't she?" More laughter. "She's a slippery one, though. How can you be sure?"

"Yes, Irene," Erik said, "Tell us. Will my old friend's brood prove to be the disruption I require?"

Irene picked the black orb up off the little table beside her chair. A two handed shake—she wasn't as nimble as she once was—and watched as the small white pyramid floated to the equally small window's surface. She quirked a smile as she read the 'Magic Eight Ball's' answer of, "All signs point to yes."

A scoff came from the darkest corner of the room. "Probable, but not absolute. You didn't actually see them do it, did you?"

"Probabilities are your specialty, Wanda," the blue one said. It was perceptively in Irene's defense. "If you doubted her _vision_, you should have offered your services."

"Bitch," Wanda accused.

Mystique merely smiled, an almost surprising flash of white in all her darkness. The retort of 'witch' that lingered on her tongue was just too simple to release.

"Regardless," Magneto, seemingly oblivious to the bickering amongst his ranks, said, "We'll have confirmation one way or the other soon enough."

* * *

A cell phone buzzed, apparently set on silent, but was ignored.

The twice-dimming lights corroborated what many of the elegantly dressed patrons that mingled in the lobby, halls, aisles, and balconies of the ornate Seattle opera house already were estimating: intermission was ending (1). Up in a balcony box seat, a certain Cajun thief charmed a belle femme who openly wore her wealth upon her earlobes, neck, and fingers. He trailed a seductive hand along the length of her arm. A mock coy blush warmed her cheeks.

She gestured to the opening curtains, a continuing of her feigned shyness. "Remy… it's starting again."

Monsieur LeBeau—never one to give up easily—swept up her hand in a gallant gesture. His cell phone rang again, but he continued ignoring it for more entertaining play. He caressed a finger over one of her bejeweled rings. With just the right amount of a heady whisper, he said, "Beautiful…"

"It belonged to my grandmother," she explained.

He winked and slid heated lips across her knuckles. "That too, _chére_." He rose up the smallest bit—an effectively charming meeting of his flirtatious eyes—to spy the result of his handiwork upon her pretty face.

The flush to her cheeks conflicted with her quite unexpected stiffening.

"Your eyes are glowing."

The whites of his full coverage contacts, what would be his sclera if it were his eyes, were pink. A flare of red escaped the edges of the contacts. The conquest missed it though. Her attention had waned to the hand he still held. She gasped. Her ring, the one his finger rested on, glowed brighter and brighter.

"_Merde_!"

He pulled the ring off her hand and tossed it high behind him. He gripped the balcony railing as he watched the glowing ring twirl higher and higher. He hoped it would do its thing in the open air above the audience. He hoped it would end there.

Lady luck was not on his side that night.

The glowing ring hit one of the decorative peaks of the ceiling. BOOM!

A cacophony of screams and wails bounced off the walls and escaped through the enormous hole in the ceiling. Frantic swishings of skirts and scuffings of wing tipped shoes scrambling for traction on the carpet accompanied the rushing screams. The startled patrons were fleeing in panic. A few who were not in immediate danger of the falling ceiling debris and people more interested in blame than safety, pointed accusingly at Remy.

Remy's companion scuttled back from him. Terrified, she branded him, "You're a mutant!"

"_Oui_," he answered. It was sardonic, a chastisement of himself. This mutinous uprising of his powers informed him of who had been calling his cell phone so persistently.

His grip tightened on the railing and squeezed. Didn't matter if the caller could hear him or not, he still asked, "Haven't I done enough?"

He got his answer not in words or the ring of his phone, but in the red-toned glow that spread out along the railing from under his hands.

"Guess not," Remy said and sighed.

And worse, a feather light bit of debris, perhaps some insulation of some sort, gingerly floated—gloated—toward the railing. For a moment Remy considered batting the debris away, but then he scowled wryly. Luck be a lady and his caller most certainly wasn't one. Besides, it was futile anyways. Something else would fall, would collapse, and perhaps without the kindly warning the next time. Luck had a sister named fate, and she hadn't been susceptible to his particular charms for more than a year now.

He grabbed his companion—another woman now immune to his charms—and scrambled them through the box seat doorway. He dove atop her to shield her just as the debris contacted the railing—BOOM!

Remy sat up. He brushed the dust and debris off himself and the woman. She coughed as the smoke cleared.

"Y' okay?"

He didn't need her voice to know the answer, though. She scuttled fearfully back from him.

"That's gonna blow too, petite," he said, indicating her now glowing velvet wrap. He had touched it when saved her. His damned touch.

She threw the wrap back through the doorway. She fled one-way. Remy fled the other.

The wrap took its damned time falling, but eventually, like lady luck and lady fate scorned, not to mention his caller, had demanded, it connected with the back of a seat. BOOM!

* * *

Xavier diligently operated Cerebro. Soft scarlet luminescence outlined an enormous map of the Northwest region of the United States. More vivid illuminations, pinpricks really, dotted the locations of individual mutants. A group of them, rimmed in a sickly purple, bunched together in the Seattle area. A second group, less the purple marring, converged nearer and nearer. Focusing in on that second group, it magnified until Xavier could see through the hull of the Blackbird, and just as he was about to speak to its occupants an even more brilliant crimson, nearly fuchsia dot spiked underneath it. This one too was rimmed like a bruise.

* * *

"We're circling for a landing—"

Boom! Woosh! Billowing smoke bubbled up from underneath them. Black and acrid, but lacking the brimstone scent Rogue connected with _rescue_ in accompaniment, the smoke momentarily filled the view from the cockpit.

"What was that?"

"Were we hit?"

"Did we lose an engine?"

Storm and Scott ignored the outbursts of their passengers while they checked all of their panels and sensors. Even Rogue leapt into action. By the time she reached the cockpit they had already flown through the pillar of smoke and could see the source of it. It was hard to tell what type of building it was because of the smoke, flames, and their distance from it, but whatever it was, there were likely a lot of people inside. The adjoining parking lot was filled with parked cars.

"Nothing to do with us," Rogue called back to the others in rash assumption.

"I'm not so sure of that," Xavier's voice said over the cabin's speakers.

* * *

Concentration lanced across Xavier's brow as he tried to connect more directly to the mutant that caused the spike._"Lost control… Not again… Thought we were through…"_

Xavier could pick up what the out-of-control mutant said aloud, but he couldn't penetrate his actual thoughts. Those were just soft and tender static and buzz, as though purposefully blocked from telepathy. Soft and tender like a bruise. If only he could get through, he could help.

"Professor?" Scott's confused impatience was evident over the intercom.

Xavier's eyed popped open in time to see the amplified muted red figure of the out-of-control mutant, sprinting full out, trailing explosion after explosion, heading straight for him.

But it was just a holographic projection and Xavier regained control, pulling the image back through him so he could continue watching from a more reasonable vantage point.

* * *

Remy outran the chasing explosions. At least, he tried. His hand left a glowing print on the hallway wall as he bumped it. Three steps later, an explosion from behind jostled him into another wall where he left another glowing handprint before he rushed onward. Debris chased up from behind him, connected with the print he left three steps back and—BOOM—rocked him into the wall again, where he left a glowing print again, where even the smallest bit of new debris could connect to release the explosive kinetic energy his powers charged in the wake of his touch and thus, BOOM… A cycle he couldn't seem to break, like fate.

Just as he acclimated to the pattern of it, lady luck, scorned somehow by him, stepped in and changed it. Debris blocked the doorway to the stairs. And worse, the end of the hall looms ahead. Nowhere else to go, he scrambled into the final seating-box and to the edge of the balcony railing—where he braces himself to step up. Idiotic, because it too began to glow.

Four levels up, he leapt just as another explosion hit—BOOM—from behind him and chased him with debris to hit—BOOM—the railing just before he leapt, giving his momentum the extra oomph it needed to catch the stage curtain as bits of plaster and wood pelted his back. Much of the curtain was glowing too by the time the swing arced him out and over the set where he let go.

BOOM!

He crashed through set pieces and rolled across the stage.

BOOM!

Hands.

BOOM!

Fingers.

BOOM!

Knuckles.

BOOM!

Forearm.

His shoulder smacked against the arch on the other side of the stage and he managed to get a knee and a foot planted unsteadily on the stage floor. As good as it was going to get without using his hands for balance.

His eyes burned to look before he'd won the fight to stand. He saw the carnage continuing around him. Screaming, fleeing people trying desperately to escape the raining debris, the relenting explosions themselves, and each other.

His eyes stung.

Each other…

His eyes stung and burned.

There were bodies… bloodied, broken, slumped… immobile.

His eyes stung and burned and flared.

And where he looked things began glowing. A jacket here, a hair-pin there, a hand feebly stretching out for a trapped loved one—sizzling red, then hot pink, scorching fuchsia, then BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

"_Arrêt!_" Remy yelled and clenched shut his eyes. "Stop it!"

"_I can help you._"

The voice seemed to come from within Remy's own head. It was mildly accented, blander than Remy's own native New Orleans drawl. It brought to mind images of hallowed halls of Ivy League Universities during a haunting storm.

Remy's face contorted as tightly as his clenched eyes and the balled fists he held carefully out of contact of anything and everything, including his own clothing and his own skin. He suffered a small death when he relented, "Do it."

The burning and crying continued around him as he waited the impossibly long moments for the eerie voice to fulfill its offer.

There was no bang or fizzle or click or sigh to signify anything had changed, only the return of the strange voice. "_It is done_."

Remy didn't yet dare open his eyes or unclench his fists. "What's the price this time?"

"_You will know when you get here_." Words as ominous as the voice itself. "_Quickly_."

Gambit was already moving.

"_Next time, do not gamble on my patience, Remy._"

Would he have been able to, Gambit would've kicked the caller's face. Instead, he settled for the backstage door with the exit sign above it.

* * *

There was still no sign of ambulances, fire trucks, or police cars. Nobody had yet come to the rescue.

"Professor?" Scott asked, for what had to be the sixth or seventh time, without answer. They were on their second circle over the explosion-raked site.

"I'm landing," Storm announced.

"Wait," came Xavier's voice through the speakers. "He's… okay, now. Someone intervened and he's gained control. The authorities are already on their way."

On cue, rescue vehicles came speeding into view, though still a couple blocks away.

"It won't be safe for him," Kitty said. She pulled her head back through the hull. "Not with that kind of damage. Those poor people."

"He's fleeing… heading… I've lost him," Xavier said. "I don't think they'll find him. Not immediately, at any rate." A conflicted sigh. "We should continue as planned, for now."

"Storm and Bobby could double back for him," Scott interjected. "We can't just abandon him."

"Agreed."

* * *

_Some parts originally drafted prior to April 2003.  
Rewrite/Edit April 13, 2005.  
Rewrite/Edit April 22, 2006.

* * *

**Footnotes (links to pics):**_

(1) www(dot)weecheng(dot)com/europe/bbs/odessa/opera2(dot)jpeg  
This is a pic I found online that represents what I imagine the interior of the theater/opera house where Gambit loses his powers (pre-destruction, of course). This pic is of an opera house in the Ukraine, not Seattle, but ya'll get the idea.

* * *

_Thank you for indulging._


	3. Chapter 3 of 4

Yes, me weak willpower lost again, so here is chapter three already! 

**Fairy Blue:** I'm so glad you like! Hope this one is just as likeable, if not more.

**Prexistence: **Your request has been granted. Bandages me poor weak will

**Ishandahalf:** bows 'Tis a great and honorable pleasure to have you read my works, dahling. And egads, you make me giddy and blush with your comments. A lot of the subplots and subtext and foreshadows (like the diaries) and such in this story won't play out until the later parts. I figured that by breaking the whole of this into its smaller parts, its identifiable mini-arcs, that I could reliably get each part _Completed_. 'Tis a smaller load to bear, that way. At least it FEELS like it, which goes a long way when I get the fleeting chunks of time to sit down and write on fan fiction for fun rather than my professional endeavoring and real-life responsibilities. I certainly do hope that these smaller parceled out stories do not disappoint you. :D

**Kitsu Lebeau: **Thank you so very very much.I certainly plan to keep going with this one. This first arc, Part One "Birds of a Feather" that is, is already completed. But, it is only just the first of five (if I remember correctly) sectioned out arcs of the sketched out whole of 'X-Men Rising.' I've got a very rough draft of the ENTIRE story already completed, but it's got so soul, so here's hoping that in dealing with each smaller part at a time, that the load won't be as great, and I can finish it all in a reasonable amount of time. I plan to only start posting each arc (or Part) after it's completed, like I'm doing with this one. Here's hoping this works. :crosses fingers:

**Anamarie Chambers:** Where's that oxygen! I need it stat! She's been like 24 hours without air! Hurry! Hurry! …ahem. Hehe. You made me breathless with all your kind words of praise, sweetie. Thank you so much for your comments. You definitely helped beat my willpower into submission. One chapter a week had been my original plan with posting this… boy did I falter… but with comments like yours, how could I not:D

**RebelRogue127: **Yes, you came back for chapter two! And I did get that incredible review you left so far for Seether. As for my writing being so dense and complicated, don't work yourself up too much about fully comprehending every word as you read it. I revisit everything important, a purposeful design so that if you do feel a little in the dark here and there, you can just keep going, hanging on for the ride, and things will be clarified in other more directly apparent ways later. :D As for Magneto and Raven wanting Rogue… are you sure it's even specifically ABOUT Rogue? Perhaps she's just a thing for them to play with, to manipulate, because they've already worked their claws into her in such a way that she's practically an unwitting pawn in their schemes… Or is that someone else I'm talking about? Hmmm… There's probably some level of truth to my teaser, but you'll have to read on to find out. :D

* * *

**Chapter Three**

"Yeah, and the grunt's with them," Victor growled into the communicator. "Almost makes this gig digestible."

"Tame as ever, eh, Sabretooth?" Erik chuckled breathily before becoming quite serious once again. "Don't indulge yourself too much. Occupy them, but don't get caught."

"Yeah, I know." He was bored of talking already. The Wolverine was close enough to smell. That particular scratch just _had_ to be itched. Soon. He hoped this reunion would be spicier than it was with the Cajun. This undercover crap just wasn't his forte. "I'll keep you posted."

* * *

"All clear, here," Logan reported to Cyclops, who was on the opposite side of the north wing of the 'Diamond Research Facility' as Logan's team. Both teams were outside the razor wire topped fence. 

Logan almost wished he'd gotten assigned the task of tracking the kid from the explosions. Seemed more his speed than this slow and quiet infiltration assignment. However, someone had to elder stripes and half-pint, though. Would he really have trusted the task solely to Storm and the still mourning One-Eye?

He grunted. This teamwork crap was still irksome to him. Far as he could remember, he preferred it solo.

"Move in," Cyclops ordered via the comm. device. "No further than the outer wall though."

"Ya heard him, elf," Logan prodded.

No sooner than he spoke, he regretted it. The sulfur scent of brimstone was hell on his sensitive heightened senses. Bamf! They disappeared. Bamf! They reappeared against the front wall beside a plate glass window. Since Nightcrawler most assuredly preferred being able to see where he was teleporting to, they were chosen to go through the front entrance, also known as the 'public front'.

Skint! Crunch. Spark. Fizzle.

"Cameras, One-eye."

* * *

Kitty's translucent hand—phasing, they called her power—passed through the bulk of the tiny camera dangling from the overhang on their side of the north wing. Less volatile than Logan's way, but it got the same results. It fizzled, sparked, and even smoked a little as Scott lowered her back to the ground. She had stood upon his knee to reach it. 

Scott shoved her flat back against the wall and peered around the corner.

"Guards, too," Scott said, hushed, into his comm. to Logan's team.

Three guards on solo separate rounds, apparently alternating, so far as he could perceive from his particular vantage point, at least, marched alertly across the courtyards edging the wings of the complex.

* * *

Kkktttzzzsss. The guard stationed at the security desk in the lobby depressed the talk button on his walkie-talkie. "Two cameras down now." His tone was urgent, on alert, but thick with the calm and confidence of experience and expertise. 

Bamf! The guard had but a moment to smell the acrid black smoke before a blue tail curled out from it to take his gun away. A pale, pale hand emerged from the smoke on the guard's other side while he was distracted. It reached silkily, slippery to his oh-so-human cheek. The effect was immediate. Veins rose, bulbous, and he convulsed, once… twice…

Fwump! He fell to the chair then slid awkwardly to the floor in a crumpled squeeze half under the desk and half against the cabinet of drawers at the edge.

"The least we expected, Scott," Logan said as Rogue pulled her glove back on with a flex and stretch of her fingers to get the thick leather to fit just right. "If this place is so dirty, shouldn't there be more?"

Logan shoved the guard over so he could get a better closer view of the video screens. "There's no cells on these feeds."

"Would they display them here?" asked Kurt's Germanic voice. "This lobby is their public zone."

* * *

"Cyclops, Logan, Professor, you're not going to believe this," Storm was saying into her comm. unit. 

She and Bobby were in a small park in the middle of a residential neighborhood. Bobby pushed a swing they were passing and it squeaked. Loudly.

Storm tossed him an admonishing look before continuing to Scott and Xavier, "I think he's heading for the research center."

* * *

Inside Cerebro, the muted scarlet radiances formed three scenes around Xavier. To the left, Storm and Bobby followed what they thought was the route the mutant from the theater was taking. To the right, Logan, Rogue, and Kurt rifled through the lobby security station. Directly front and center, Kitty phased her and Scott through the outer wall. 

"Indeed, I am to agree," Xavier said. The scene ahead of him held a familiar muted red figure with the sickly purple trim further down the hall. "Scott, you've got company. Explosive company."

An abrupt movement by Logan in the scene to the right pulled his attention there. A different muted glowing figure, also edged with the purple, was stalking up from the hall behind them.

"Behind you, Logan," Xavier said, but Logan already smelled him.

* * *

"Sabretooth," Logan growled. 

"You brought the frail with ya again," Victor said as he stalked into view. "Going soft, old man?"

"Stay here," Logan said to Rogue and Nightcrawler. Skint! He released his claws before he was up and over the desk. He rammed into Creed and rolled them back into the dark hall from which Sabretooth had emerged… just as what few lights there were for Kurt and Rogue went out.

* * *

Kitty gasped once when it went dark. She gasped again when a small brightly glowing object sailed toward her and Scott from out of the depths of that long dark hallway stretching ahead of them. 

Scott shoved her to one side while he dodged to the other side in time for the charged playing card—he realized as it passed within a few inches of his goggled eyes—to fly into the wall behind them.

BOOM!

The blast threw them both forward, away from the explosion itself but toward their attacker.

"Oomph!" Kitty smacked into some equipment, learned her lesson and phased, stumbling through the adjacent wall and into another room.

"Kitty!" Scott called when she disappeared from his oh-so-limited sight.

Deep in that hall of darkness came a disembodied—for all he could see—voice serrated from cigarettes and liquor, like awls, slippery from the Mississippi sprawl, and spiced with a crawfish crawl. "Think y' got other things t' worry about, _mon ami_."

A crackly fizzle, and three charged cards illuminated a face to match the voice (1). The man's demonic red irises flared in a sea of black sclera. A flick of his wrist, and the cards were soaring at Scott.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Scott dove ahead as the ceiling exploded and rained down on him. He rolled to his feet and let loose a concussive beam that missed the man and smashed through the wall at the end of the hall. He was on his feet, readying another blast, when the metal tip of a Bo/staff uppercutted his chin and whipped his head painfully back. It popped him in the gut, reeling him forward. It hooked the back of his knees, buckling his legs. It swept at his ankles, toppling him to the floor.

Whap!

A blow to the back of the head—pistol-whipped if it'd been a pistol—and Scott was out cold for the moment.

* * *

"Scott! Logan!" Storm was all but shouting into her comm. unit. To Bobby, she said, "Nothing." 

Xavier's voice crackled through the comm. "Storm—skkt zzt—losing the teams—skkt zzt—elp them—skkkkkt!"

"Professor!" Storm pressed the earpiece tighter in her ear as if that would make it clearer.

"What'd he say?"

"They need help," Storm answered and was already moving rapidly.

Bobby didn't need to be told twice.

* * *

"Cyclops, are you there?" Rogue whispered harshly—_desperately?_—into her comm. "Logan left us. He went after Creed." 

Skkktttzzzsss. "Quiet, _chére_," said the saucy drawl over Cyclops' comm. "Got my own _petite chat_ t' chase."

"Who? What?" Rogue balked back in confusion.

* * *

The sanguine-eyed man stepped over Cyclops' unconscious form and dropped the comm. device. His heavy boot crushed it like a cigarette. Another step and he was opening the door to where he thought the girl had gone when she disappeared from the corridor just after his first blast. There was a good-sized hole on the other side of the door. It seemed logical that she had gone through it. 

However, it was empty.

* * *

Kitty ran through wall after dark wall of rooms merely dimly lit by emergency lights. 

"Whoa… jackpot!"

One had finally caught her attention. The pale amber glow of the emergency lights illuminated the room enough for her to know that it was likely the security office for the cells and more. It also contained a large electrical box, opened, with lots of circuits and breakers in organized display. They were even labeled.

She started flipping them. A red light on the camera above her on her left lit up. So did buttons and monitors on her right.

The doorway was still eerily dark behind her.

* * *

"Shat? What's a shat?" 

"Rhymes with cat." Nightcrawler was actually trying to be helpful.

"Kitty?" Rogue gasped. She had just made the connection of what the southern stranger had meant. She almost gasped again when the power, the lights with it, returned.

"She's okay, _liebling_," Kurt said.

He indicated the screens at the security desk. Kitty could be seen pushing buttons on a more elaborate security monitoring room.

"Those aren't the same feeds as before," Rogue said. They could also see the cells Scott spoke of in the briefing.

"Kurt! Rogue!" Kitty squealed gleefully over the fallen guard's walkie-talkie, which Rogue then grabbed.

A glance back at the screen that had Kitty on it and Rogue and Kurt could see she was speaking to them on some kind of microphone.

"I found it!" Kitty continued. "I can see the whole complex from here. Logan's duking it out with some blond hairy guy." She cringed. "Ooh, that had to hurt. And there's Storm and Bobby! They just broke through the south fence… I think. What are they doing back here already?" She shook her head—reset. "Anyway! Can you see the cells on your screens? That McCoy guy is in one, just like the Professor said."

"We see the cells, but which one," Rogue asked.

"They're labeled on my side," Kitty explained. "Top row, third from the right."

"There he is," Rogue said. "I can't see him in it. Too dark. Why is the light out in that one?"

Kitty shrugged. "Maybe it blew when the breakers went."

"We should release him, _ja_?"

However, Rogue didn't answer him. She was wide-eyed at the screens. "Kitty, watch out!"

On the screen, Kitty spun to see the sanguine-eyed attacker, charged card in hand, framed by the darkened doorway to her side.

She, Kitty, gasped, third time.

* * *

"_Allo, petite_," he said as she back peddled away from him. He advanced in a stalking saunter. He was coming at her from the only door. Where else could she go? 

Kitty reached back and found the wall with her fingertips just before spinning towards it and phasing through it in a full out breathy panicked sprint.

Gambit blinked. He waved his Bo/staff in the space where she had just been to check if she'd gone invisible or something. A glance to the monitors showed him the truth of it. She flipped from one screen to another as she phased, ghost like, through wall after wall.

"Be useful on a pinch, that," he said with a smirk before scanning the other screens.

"That too," he said as he spotted Kurt teleporting, in a wake of black smoke, from one screen only to appear, black smoke and all, a moment later with a… blue furred beast that did not resemble the man he remembered having seen in there the last time he had…visited. The girl with them backed away at the sight of the beast. He guessed she wasn't expecting the mutant's appearance either.

He knew he should intercede, but it didn't seem sport enough. Neither did chasing after the little kitty. Heck, even the eye-beam guy was taken too easily for his tastes.

The monitor that viewed the spot where he had fought Cyclops earlier showed the hall barren of the man's fallen form. He scanned the monitors for a glimpse of him, but couldn't find one. He did, however, find one that showed the big cat and the wolverine going at it.

He grinned. Finally there was something interesting, challenging even, for him to get in on. After all, he had gotten his nickname for a reason.

* * *

Logan's claws sliced across Creed's chest and tore through the taller man's shirt like it was wet paper. Creed didn't even dodge it. He used the motion to catch one of Logan's arms, then the other, and flipped him over his shoulder. Creed hurled around to give him even more of a pounding when he smelled a blooming scent of ozone. 

Just past where Logan had landed, and was already climbing to his feet, stood Storm, her eyes gone cloudy white, with static electricity peeling crookedly from the tips of her hair, and Bobby, his breath coming out in misty wisps. Wind howled in gusts at Creed. A movement from the boy trained Creed's eyes to the wall that ran along side them. Frost was forming there, advancing in a crystalline wave closer and closer to him. Kinks of lightning danced around it and between the walls, ceiling, and floor.

He was finding it hard to move, his clothes, hair, and boots stiff and cold, when Logan dove at him. The ice at his feet, which Bobby had so subtly formed ahead of the frost on the wall, shattered as Logan's weight tackled Sabretooth back and to the floor.

"Logan!" Storm had shouted. It would've been so much simpler if Bobby had been allowed to finish freezing him in place. There wasn't enough room in there to call upon her control of the weather to intervene. Not with Logan in the way.

She and Bobby feebly watched as Logan tumbled off and rolled up into a crouch, claws brandished, ready to dive at Creed again when a surprise flash hit him in the chest with a small echoing boom.

Boom! Boom! Boom! More charged cards exploded against Logan's chest to drive him further and further from the on looking Bobby and Storm. They also echoed more and louder the further back he was driven, a fact that drew Storm after them faster. Whatever the new attacker's plans, it involved something dark, hollow, and deep. Try as she might, she couldn't get a clear view of just what that something-dark- hollow-and-deep was in the blinks of pinkish light that the attacker's projectiles allowed.

"Step aside," came Scott's voice from behind them. Startled by his presence as they may have been, both Bobby and Storm responded in kind. A concussive blast split the space between them and Logan's attacker, who dodged, but was clipped anyway. It spun him to the side and out of immediate view.

Scott turned those optic blasts of his onto the rousing Sabretooth. Again and again he fired, advancing on him, shoving him violently toward the reason there was an echo, a deep metal lined hole or trench, perhaps, from what any of them could gleam with the light provided by Cyclops' blasts.

Sabretooth was stumbling against a railing when Scott's biggest blast threw him back and through it. A yell as he fell, then thud as he hit something, then thud, thud, something else, something else, and then silence until a faint and final thump signaled he'd hit bottom.

"What is that?" Bobby asked as he and Storm caught up to Scott at the railing and peered down.

"I can't tell," Scott supplied. "Whatever is in there is down too far to see from here. Can you go in for a closer look, Storm?"

"There seems to be enough room to get a good wind going," she answered, "but I think we should find the others first."

A whooshing sound, like a door operated by hydraulics, came from the direction they had last seen Logan's attacker going. The swelling spray of light that escaped to splash across the top of the hole Sabretooth had been knocked into further confirmed that a heavy door was rising. Believing the man was escaping, Scott let loose an instinctual blast in that direction.

"Stars—" started a deep, yet cultured voice. Then Bamf! Cyclops' beam cut through the spiraling black smoke from Kurt's teleport to collide with the hallway wall from where they had just come.

Bamf! Further around the railed aisle, the same black smoke appeared.

"—And garters," the cultured voice finished. A blue furry hand—paw really, like a gorilla's almost—wafted the stinky smoke away from his face.

"Kurt? Rogue?" Storm inquired and started for them.

"_Guten tag_," Kurt said cheerfully. He was already approaching them. He gestured behind him and reported, "We retrieved Dr. McCoy."

A man looking very different from what the briefing had suggested he'd look like adjusted his glasses and greeted, "Pleased to make your acquaintance."

Storm, Scott, and Bobby openly stared at the blue furred beast that followed behind Kurt. If people were surprised by the contradiction of his voice compared to his looks before, it was many more times unexpected now. McCoy, apparently not quite used to such stares, fidgeted under their shocked looks. He was grateful that the stirring moans of their waking comrade drew their immediate attention away from him.

Logan sat up before the burns on his chest were fully healed. The front of his uniform was scorched, crispy in some places. He looked at the assembling group and immediately asked, "Where's half-pint?"

"Wasn't she with you, Scott?" Storm asked.

"She was gone when I came to."

"In here," echoed Kitty's cheery voice from several speakers around the perimeter of the room. "Come see what I found."

"That's helpful," Scott wryly commented a moment before the hydraulics began opening a large metal door past Rogue, who was behind McCoy and still approaching Scott and the rest.

Just as their eyes were adjusting to the very bright room beyond those doors, they heard the hydraulics reverse, closing the doors, and their explosive male attacker's sleek moving shadow slipped inside. They all dashed after him, but being closest, Rogue slipped through first. They had just enough time to see a silhouetted hand snake up behind Rogue, latch onto her face, and jerk her aside before the doors fully shut, severing them from the X-Men.

They had no way of knowing the person who grabbed Rogue's face was bare handed. Admittedly, it was the least of their concerns at the moment.

McCoy, fearing for the girl that just helped him escape, leapt to the railing, feet and hands gripped it with equal dexterity, and leapt straight at the button that had been used to close the door. As soon as his paw contacted it, he knew of their dilemma. It was burned, melted really. Useless.

"Logan, cut the lines," Scott ordered.

Skint! Slash! A whirring sound, whining, but the doors didn't budge.

"Bobby, ice it and I'll blast it," Scott commanded as he got in position to do just that. "It'll shatter."

"Rogue could get hurt—"

"I'll be careful," Scott swore, then with force, he demanded, "Do it!"

The metal protested from the rapid drop of its temperature. Frost formed across the surface and Bobby stepped back.

Phwooom! He let loose the smallest controlled beam he could muster in attempt to split it, take a chunk out, something, anything to give them a way through with out too much chance of killing Rogue or Kitty, wherever she may be on the other side, but—CRACK! WHOMP! BOOM! Against the expected physics of it, chunks of the door came flying back toward them.

Everyone looked guiltily at Scott. Could he have mistaken how strong—or weak, rather—the steel was?

"It wasn't me," Scott said defensively, wryly.

"Just me," said a ...somewhat familiar voice from the vicinity of the blown door.

The smoke and icy mist cleared. A female, arms up-spread, hair whipping in an unseen breeze, limbs cutting a path in the light in a way that it almost seemed like that's what's projecting the light like a bird aflame. They don't quite comprehend that she is floating, hovering, flying until she drops—sack of bricks—to the rubble-strewn floor.

Bobby's the first to her side, somehow.

"Rogue?" he asks in surprise, in confusion, in worry.

On her hands and knees and trying to stand, she said, "I love breaking things." It was a breathy rush.

Logan checked the body peaking out from under some of the rubble. Dirty-blond hair, blue eyes, Major rank insignia on her jacket… "She's military."

FLASH!

* * *

_Several members of the Military Brass converse within range of his heightened hearing. If he cranes his neck far enough, painful as it is in his bindings, he can catch a glimpse of the woman challenging her commanders._

"_Colonel, I must protest," she says. "It's inhumane."_

"_He's a mutant," Colonel Stryker says with a wave of his hand, "an animal."_

"_He's one of ours, sir," she states most adamantly._

"_And he will do what his country asks of him."_

_

* * *

_

FLASH!

Logan blinked away the memory. A set of dog tags mingling with the hair at the base of the downed woman's neck caught his eye and he fingered them, reading, "Danvers?" He didn't know how right he was. How right, and how very wrong…

"Yeah, Patch?" She saw Logan through a tangle of her hair—W_hen did my hair get so long_—as he was inspecting the figure below him. She whistled, and then corrected him, "Over here, hot shot."

Logan's head whipped up to look at her in surprise. He seemed as startled as Bobby did right then, and he repeated Bobby's question from a moment before. "Rogue?"

She flipped her hair up and out of the way as she sat upright on her heels. "Get hit in the head or something, Patch?" She brushed the dust off her knees and thighs as she stood.

They all got a good clear look at her.

From Rogue's mouth, came the words, "It's me, Carol. Stop looking at me like you've just seen a ghost, Patch. You're the one that supposed to be dead."

"This isn't good, is it?" That was Kitty. She continued through the wall just to the side of Rogue/Carol… both of them. She didn't see the Bo/staff shove her from behind to send her stumbling to her knees. She didn't see the easy withdrawal of it, the retraction of it, or the pocketing of it. She _did_, however, see him grab Rogue, careful of her skin, and hold a charged playing card under her chin.

"Trade," the spiced saucy voice said. "The _Bête_ for the _femme, d'accord_?"

Carol/Rogue rolled her eyes. Without any hint of a warning, no bend of knee or deep inhale to concentrate against a strain, she flew straight up and knocked him into the ceiling. Ignoring the falling crumbling chunks of ceiling, she caught their decent a few feet below the ceiling, hovered there while she twisted to pull him around the front of her, and tossed him into the corner, opposite the side where Kitty still sprawled—all as though he weighed no more than a light evening purse. If he were still conscious, he didn't show it.

Still hovering, she reached to her hip to pull out her cuffs and when she didn't feel them she scanned the floor below her assuming they had fallen out at some point. Instead of cuffs, she saw herself half buried beneath remnants of the door and a fine layer of dust and melting ice.

"W-what the…?" She stammered. "I subdued her... I…"

Still hovering, her blue eyes rolled back in her head. She blinked, revealing brown eyes, and—"Ya touched me is what happened," Rogue said in her own voice.

She looked below her. She was _still_ hovering.

"Shit, how do I get down?"

Her body obeyed.

"Like that, I guess."

As soon as she was solid on her feet, Bobby reached for her, to comfort her, make sure she was fine, but Rogue pulled back.

"You alright, kid?" Logan asked.

"Got a wallop of a headache, but I'm okay," Rogue said with a shrug.

Scott got both pairs of restraints from Major Danvers. He tossed a set to Logan. "Restrain her," he said pointing to the Major. He restrained the sticky-as-molasses-man himself.

Logan examined the metal of the cuffs. "Adamantium," he murmured before closing them around her wrists. Click-click!

"Now can you come see what I found?" Kitty asked.

"What is it?" Scott said.

Logan was already moving through a doorway near where Kitty had come through the wall. He seemed almost entranced by what he saw in a possible-missing-piece-of-his-past kind of way.

Following Logan they all saw what made the Diamond Research Facility a medical research center.

"I thought you'd want to see it," Kitty said. And what a sight it was.

Surgical steel gleamed everywhere. To the right side three cylinders sat upright. The front was glass or a dense plastic—they couldn't decipher for sure just yet—through which a thick, opaque green liquid could be seen. Consoles, digital displays, and delicate surgical tools hung limp from mechanical arms to either side of each cylinder. The center was occupied mostly by slab after slab after slab. Strong, hard, cold looking restraints formed half circles where a person's neck, arms, and legs would lie. Bubbling tanks of adamantium strung with large injection tubes and needles were to the immediate left. Those held Logan's attention the most. Did he even register the stacks of molds—surgical tools and cuffs—beside the tanks? A long counter crowded with mundane lab equipment like microscopes, x-ray displays, test tubes, blood-spinners, diagnostic displays and other computerized mechanisms, the entirety of which consumed the remainder of the left side of the room.

"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old," McCoy read in that contradictory cultured voice of his. The screen saver was his source. It scrolled various quotes. "Seek more than just what they thought." He adjusted his glasses and said, "That's not how it goes." He read the next one as well. "I tread in the footsteps of illustrious men… but I will do better." He turned from the screens in disgust. "These have been twisted."

He joined Scott at the far end of the room, where the real prized material was located. Scott had one of the refrigeration unit doors open and was examining one of the vials he'd removed from the specialized holders contained within them. The particular one in his hand was labeled neatly with the name Maximoff, Pietro.

"Blood samples?"

McCoy picked one out for himself from the next refrigeration unit. The name on this one was 'Darkholme, Raven.' He rotated it and spotted a bit of tissue in a clear liquid.

"Among other things," McCoy said. "Genetic catalogue, I hypothesize."

"The other security room is behind that wall," Kitty said pointing past the refrigeration units. She scrunched up her nose. "Ew. I phased through that stuff." A shake of her head to clear the thought, and she added, "There's a control room catty-corner to it, and some wicked looking cells beyond that. Whatever they're designed to hold has gotta be scarier than the Beast here. No offense."

"None taken," McCoy replied as he looked over more of the collection of genetic materials. "I'm not quite fond of it myself, yet."

Barton, Beaubier, Beaubier, Boudreaux, Boudreaux, Blair, Braddock, Braddock, Braddock… Next row. Cargill, Carosella, Cassidy, Cassidy… Cheney… Colbert, Cortez…Creed, Crestmere… Next row. DaCosta, Dane, Dane, Danvers—_interesting_—Dukes… Two rows down. Ferguson… Foley… Frost… Gavin… Grey, Greycrow, Guthrie, Guthrie… The last names mostly meant nothing to him, other than there being so many of them.

Swish! Clink! Clank! Clatter! Scalpels, forceps, and other scary tools spilled to the floor.

Rogue, still holding a splintered drawer, sheepishly glanced to Scott and McCoy. "Thought it was locked."

"Shh!" Logan returned to the entranceway to hear more clearly. "Footsteps. Heavy. A lot of them."

"Kurt, check it out," Scott ordered.

BAMF!

* * *

BAMF! 

He landed beside a puddle of water in the hallway outside the pit area where Storm and Bobby had come across the brawling Wolverine and Sabretooth.

BAMF! The end of the hall, rounding a corner. BAMF! Another hall. Another corner. BAMF! Shadows preceded the first of the charging figures. Kurt skidded to stop his momentum. BAMF! A higher vantage point. Three corridors were emptying soldiers into the one below him.

Ping! A bullet struck too close for his comfort.

BAMF!

* * *

BAMF! 

Nightcrawler returned from checking what was coming from them. A grave look accompanied his equally grave tone when he told them, "Soldiers. Too many to count at a glance. They saw me."

"I signaled them," Rogue said smugly. Blue eyes. A blink. Brown eyes. She pointed to Major Danvers. "I mean, _she_ did. Before she grabbed me."

Logan prodded Rogue. "How do we get out?"

"I… I don't know," Rogue said.

The jogging footfalls were in range for all of them to hear already. It could've been the echo, but the staccato of their steps were so numerous, it was hard to estimate how many. Two dozen? Three? More?

"Yeah, you do. You absorbed her. You were flying. You still got her strength. You've still got _her_ inside you. Think, Rogue," Logan said. He squeezed her arm. Shook her. "We can't beat this many ourselves. They will capture us. Imprison us. Experiment on us."

Bobby tugged at Logan's arm and said. "She doesn't know."

"I could look it up on the computers," Kitty offered.

"No time," Storm answered.

"Hey, wake up!" Scott was trying to rouse the restrained male. It didn't work.

"The pit-thing!" Rogue blurted out. "Stairs on the far side lead down! Service elevator at the bottom."

"We're leaving," Scott ordered before he hoisted the still unconscious man over his shoulders.

"Allow me," McCoy said and easily took the slippery man's weight.

* * *

_Edited/rewritten April 14, 2005  
Edited/tweaked April 27, 2006

* * *

**  
Footnotes (links to pics):**_

(1) www(dot)deviantart(dot)com/deviation/31776702/  
(Just put a . in place of '(dot)' for the links to work. I'd REALLY like ya'll to see these pictures, especially this one.)  
"Gambit Emerging." A picture I drew/colored in Photoshop. Might be my favorite for this story. :D

**Goes with following text:**  
Deep in that hall of darkness came a disembodied—for all he could see—voice serrated from cigarettes and liquor, like awls, slippery from the Mississippi sprawl, and spiced with a crawfish crawl. "Think y' got other things t' worry about, mon ami."

A crackly fizzle, and three charged cards illuminated a face to match the voice. The man's demonic red irises flared in a sea of black sclera. A flick of his wrist, and the cards were soaring at Scott.

* * *

Thank you for indulging. 


	4. Chapter 4 of 4

Here it is, the final chapter of X-Men Rising, Part One – 'Birds of a Feather'!

Well… after a few quick (su-u-u-u-ure) Author Notes, of course. Hehe.

**Review responses: **

**Tigresblanco n' Shippo:** Happy to oblige ya:winks:

**Ishandahalf:** Omg, tell me about it! I couldn't even check my hit count (which I like live for since it's early in the story to be expecting many reviews and it's been so long since I'm posted on the site that most people have forgotten about me) let alone, I couldn't post this here final chapter of Part One that's just been itching to make an appearance! Lol. The quickness of the pace and the meeting the characters like Gambit and the Carol thing are purposeful in that, I originally did this in script format, which well, means that there's a limited time frame to fit it all in. 'Cause let's face it, if you can't read a script in around two hours then filmed, it won't fit in two hours. Lol. The entire point of this first part is to set things in motion, as if it was the opening fifteen minutes or so of a movie. In prose form, it obviously takes up much more space and time for the reading, since I can describe so much more, use the words in place of what actual visuals would do for ambiance, flavor, mood, pacing, etc. On how much of Carol Rogue got… well, you're not the only one wondering. In no time at all, the Professor and the others are going to be addressing that issue. But, here's a hint… it all ties in to repercussions of Striker's attack on mutants! Okay, so that's not that much of a hint since it's in the story summary. Hehe. Oh, and if you liked what you've seen of Gambit so far… :giggles: …you're going to LOVE this chappy. Let the flirting begin. Appropriately, or not. Guess he didn't learn his lesson even after being tossed around as easily as swatting a fly (as you so wonderfully put it, hehe). But, then again, they don't call him Gambit without reason. :D And I'm so very glad you liked the Gambit pic. Of all the pics I've done while writing this, so far, that is by far my favorite. :D Thank you so much, ish!

**Anamarie Chambers:** I'm ecstatic that the action scenes are being enjoyed. Sometimes I think I am horrible at them, in prose, at least, but I know I'm better when writing in film/video script format, and like I told ish, this started out as a script, so the translation came out so much better on the concept of action than it usually does, I think. I need to remember that for later actiony-prose. Note to self: script action first, then fill in the prose! Hehe. I had so much fun with Gambit's introduction. I wanted him to explode onto the page (screen) like Nightcrawler does in X2 (though I first wrote this scene way before X2 came out… you can even check a previous evolution of this story on Redemption Remix—for proof of the date. Lol. I had an even cooler earlier version of his first presence in my first Movie-verse fic, with him pickpocketing people in the subway station and choosing poorly in a group of students on an outing. In that one, the lights all go out and the action is only revealed via the sparks and booms of Remy's charged cards and Jubilee's firework pafts. I might evolve that scene into use somewhere in here if I can, maybe a danger room session or something, because, dang did I enjoy writing that and thought it came out so cool! Ahem… enough gushing about my own stuff. Hehe. Next topic of your review… Remy's voice. Could you tell I was having a good time coming up with different ways to describe it? 'Cause boyo, did I ever! Lol. Thank you as well, for checking out the pic. I have some on that site for some of my original stories too (script and novel/short-story), I believe. Drawing helps me flesh out a story big time. So does acting out some of the scenes (vocally) as I write. Though I don't have enough paying work yet, I'm an actress, singer, writer, director, and minor artisan otherwise, and I can't tell you how those fields all feed each other to make performance in each arena much more lush and denser. Alas, work in those fields in my location is all but nil. So, unfortunately, I don't get that creative outlet as much as I'd like. But, I'm working on it. Hubby and I (musician, composer, pro lights/sound) are saving up to move to a location with more work opportunities in the entertainment and artistic fields we so love. And, I must say, that your comment about Remy not having control where Rogue is concerned made me laugh out loud for real. Seriously awesome comment, that! Hehe. But, be careful what you wish for… 'cause it's not all going to go as smoothly as the Mississippi's push. Hint: See the title of Part 02, located at the end of this chappie!

Wow… some long Review responses there, huh? Hehe. Not quite done with the Author's notes yet, so have patience. Gotta get just a couple nods in there. Read them if you can, because these people truly deserve their acknowledgements.

**Thanks for the 'fave':**  
Hot-Salsa & Tigresblanco n' Shippo!

**Thanks for the 'alert':**  
CelticHero, Kitsu Lebeau, Kylelara, Melissa Black 13, Prexistence, RgGoth & Tigresblanco n' Shippo!

**Thanks for the 'hits':**  
Everyone! Even if ya just popped on for a gander and didn't read, seeing that hit-count up to 881 (when I typed this) just gave me the giddy flutters in my head and my tummy!

**Special thanks **to** SLH **for** beta-reading **the very first drafts of this in prose format… like over a year ago. ( :hides in shame: )  
You are such an awesome peer and friend. I certainly hope you find a way to update those awesomely lovely X-Men stories of your own.

Everyone, PLEASE don't forget to check out the pics via the links (put . in place of (dot)) in the footnotes! Feel free to comment about them here and/or on the deviant art page I link ya too. :D

Okay, that's all for the Author's Notes. On with the real attraction!

(ALL HAIL ROMY!)

* * *

**Chapter Four**

With Major Danvers in a fireman's hold, Logan took the lead. It hadn't gotten any brighter since they first peered into the pit after Sabretooth's fall, but at least they had rails on either side of the staircase that hugged the interior of the wall—an enormous spiral—to direct them. The center of the pit was like a coal cylinder, matte-inky black, smearing onto them and swallowing them whole. Even with heightened senses, Logan could barely see to reach the rails and the steps immediately ahead of him, let alone how much farther they had to go to reach the bottom. Whatever could possibly be lurking in there was the least of their concerns at the moment. Instead, their first priority consisted of outrunning a couple of squads of army soldiers.

Storm, Bobby, Rogue, and Kitty kept close behind Logan. Next came McCoy, still carrying the cuffed, unconscious male. Scott brought up the rear.

The first batch of soldiers teetered over the rim. Their steps on the grated stairs echoed at a deafening decibel. Scott blasted a warning shot. PHOOM! It grazed a soldier, spinning his torso up and back, his arm flailing out and behind him, his hand squeezing a trigger reactionary—RATATATATATATATAT!

Bobby threw up a small ice shield that a few rounds pinged off of. Kitty phased and a couple passed through her to bite and lodge into the wall. Mostly, though, everyone ducked. Everyone, except Scott, that was. To be sure he hadn't imagined what he had seen in the wash of light from his beam, he fired again. PHOOM! This time, they all saw it—saw _them_.

Purple. Blue. Clunky skeletal things glistening like wet bruises in the reflection of Scott's red optic blasts. Their red eyes _seemed_ about to fire a beam of some kind. (1) (2)

"Shit! Get down!" Logan.

"Go! Go! Go!" Kitty yelled and scrambled forward into Rogue and Bobby. The three of them tripped and bumped down several stairs past Logan.

"Goddess!" Storm.

"Giants!" Nightcrawler.

"Stars and Garters!" Duh, Hank, of course. "They actually _made_ them!"

"I don't think they're operational," Scott said. He didn't even flinch at the sight of them. A man half-numb with lingering grief. "They would have attacked already if they were."

"What are they?" Bobby.

PHOOM! Scott fired off another warning blast to keep the soldiers at bay. It gave them another moment to stare—awed, horrified, intrigued, and trembling—at the monstrosities. Scott's beam cut off an instant latter and the monstrosities were rubbed out by the fog of sooty darkness in a blink of his eyes, quick enough to doubt if there were ever really there.

"Get up," Logan said to the trio that had fallen ahead of him. "Keep moving."

Bobby and Kitty continued, but Rogue lifted herself afloat and ambled over the railing. "I'll distract the soldiers."

"Like hell you will," Logan snarled. "This isn't the Danger Room. Those are live rounds."

As Kurt and Storm passed by them, Rogue fingered a hole torn in her sleeve. She showed off a second one on her upper shoulder. And, yet still, she showed another at her abdomen, near her hip. She held up three impact-compressed bullets to Logan in offering.

"Apparently, _Miss Marvel_ there is bullet-proof too."

He smacked them out of her hand. "But how long will _you_ be?" To the passing McCoy, it seemed belittling, cruel, like kicking an arrogant, ignorant child off her pedestal.

PHOOM! Another distraction shot. Scott had caught up. "What's the hold up?"

"Thinks she's Jean or something."

Rogue took immediate offense. So did Scott. But he hid it well in the dark. She couldn't even hear evidence of the tightness in his jaw when he said, "Nobody lags behind. We leave together."

Kitty's hands oozed up from below and latched onto Scott's legs. They watched in surprise as bullets harmlessly ripped through him. Logan grunted with two ripe hits. His hands instinctively capped the stomach wounds and, as such, he dropped Danvers. Rogue caught her, barely, before she tumbled over the rails and into the syrupy oblivion below. The bullets either completely missed Rogue and Danvers, or like Rogue suggested, she—and Rogue by proxy—was invulnerable.

Kitty's head surfaced enough to say, "We found the elevator. Storm sent me to fetch you." She smiled, private joke like. "Going down."

Scott had sunk ankle deep already when Logan found he was being lifted. His eyes rolled back in his head from the pain the abrupt movement caused on his now-healing punctured stomach and Rogue smirked—smart-ass—for getting the upper hand on him. Her smile only grew as she flew them down. She was enjoying Danvers' powers almost too much.

In moments, the entire team stepped onto the clangy freight elevator with its metal mesh floors, walls, and doors.

"Going up," Kitty said brightly as she activated the elevator.

"Going home," Bobby sighed in weary relief.

The threatening footfalls of the soldiers echoed more and more dimly as they rose up the elevator shaft. So did the gunfire pings.

* * *

Creeaaak…Ping! Fump-fump! Thud. The seatbelt buckle finally lost its struggle with the bulky man's girth. A piece snapped off, flung into the tray in it's upright position against the back of the seat that pressed against his knees, to finally settle on the carpeted floor between his feet. He shifted, gaining comfort, but didn't wake.

"This is humiliating," Cortez grumbled. He was in the aisle seat, to the left of the man that popped his seatbelt in his sleep. The passengers around them were openly staring.

"It's boring," Quicksilver said from the window seat. He was on the other side of the larger-than-a-line-backer man his father had sent them to retrieve. Thrrrmp-thrrmp-thrrmp-thrrmp-thrrmp… The speedy drumming of Quicksilver's fingers on the armrest gave credence to his nickname in equal measure as his hair did. Well, his hair was more white than silver, really.

"At least he stopped snoring, Fabian," Pietro offered. He was trying to make the best of their awkward, cramped situation on the public airplane.

Of course, with that said, the sleeping man's snores returned.

Cortez groaned. "You just had to say something, didn't you, Pietro?" He elbowed the snoring man. "Cain, you dumb meathead. Wake up."

* * *

The low rumble of the engines was a reassuring presence to them. A half-hour into the flight and they were starting to relax. McCoy returned up front from his second check on the restrained passengers, ahem, prisoners. It kept him busy among these strangers, his rescuers.

"They are still unconscious," McCoy reported. Settling back in his seat, he asked of Rogue, "If you don't mind my inquiring—"

"Memories, personality, powers, energy, and sometimes physical traits," Rogue said before he even completed the question. It was tiring to always explain it to people. "I get them all, absorb them, and they get a nap."

"John didn't," Bobby said. Was that suspicion, accusation braided into his tone?

"When they do lose consciousness, how long does it usually last? How long do you retain their abilities?" Hank was like a kid with a new toy. He looked like he wanted to take her apart; figure out how all her pieces worked, and put her back together.

"The guy's faking it," Logan said, ceasing the conversation. He flicked a distrusting look at Doctor McCoy. Despite the cordial nature he sensed from furry man, Logan didn't much like the eagerness he was so openly displaying. It harkened too close to wanting to dissect her. Not really, but enough. Regardless, he was more wary of the flaming card guy. Something about his presence really chafed him.

"He's been awake at least since we got on the elevator," Logan explained further. '_Don't say too much around him_,' was left unsaid.

Those not flying the plane turned to see the cocky grin lifting the corners of the man-in-question's mouth. He peaked between his cinnamon-and-marmalade bangs. Those ruby-on-onyx eyes sparkled with mischief.

"Tired of staring at de back of my eyelids, anyway," he said and sat up straighter. He rolled his shoulders, then his head. He straightened and bent and straightened again his legs. He raised his arms up high and arched—stretching as best he could in the chair and giving all those who might be interested a fine show of his sculpted abs in the process.

"Getting stiff, too," he added with a wink to Rogue.

"You're all class, ain't ya," Logan asked with a bit of a growl.

"Not yours, non," the man drawled lazily. Yet, it still managed to be biting, and the Wolverine was more than willing to bite back. But, before he could…

"You can remove the woman's restraints," Xavier said in temperance over the comm. speakers. They had regained communications soon after take off and had already gone over preliminary debriefing. More in-depth explanation and analysis would wait for their return. "Major Danvers is of no threat, is she Logan?"

Logan grunted and removed her restraints. "She's good people, far as I remember."

"She called the military in on us," Bobby complained. The memory of his brother ratting them out was still raw. He hadn't spoken with his family once since that incident.

"Y' were breaking and entering a _military_ installation," said the sticky smoke and bourbon voice of their too-observant-for-their-own-good captive.

Click-click! He dangled the cuffs off a gloved finger. He had picked the locks on his cuffs and freed himself. It was strikingly apparent that he could have done so at any time.

"A little somet'ing I would know about, _n'est-ce pas_?"

Skint! By the time Logan's brandished claws stopped at the stranger's throat, said stranger had his Bo/staff telescoped to its full length, its tri-pointed tip insinuated at Logan's groin.

"Calm down, Logan," Xavier said over the speakers, "He won't be doing anything rash while in mid-flight, will you, Mister….?"

"Gambit, on a pinch." He hung the cuffs off one of Logan's claws. "And if de _belle femmes_ be into that kind of kink—" He retracted the Bo/staff and pocketed it in one easy move that blended fluidly with his two strides towards Rogue. "—then it's Remy LeBeau."

"I could freeze his mouth shut," Bobby offered.

"Nah, it'd just melt. Better if I suck him dry."

"If that's your biggest threat, _chére_, then Remy give up." He held his hands up, ready to be cuffed again…by her. "Punish as y' see fit."

With an enduring stroke of his devilishly enchanting eyes, he lapped at all that fine bare skin he clearly imagined was waiting just for him beneath her uniform. The moment those smoldering embers of his connected with her maple browns, she was swathed with the sensation of being lathered with molasses. He swallowed audibly and licked his lips, already tasting her.

"Might be worth it, non?"

Kitty looked at him queerly. "Weren't you holding her hostage just a little while ago? And stop if I'm wrong, but didn't she kick your ass?"

"Kitty, language," Storm chastised from the pilot's seat.

A shrug, non-committal, then, "Remy like 'em feisty." He scooped up Kitty's hand and placed a gallant kiss atop it. "All kinds, really."

"She's jailbait, you know," Bobby interjected.

"Ain't been caught yet," Remy said. He flicked a glance at the cuffs in Logan's hand. "Well, not kept, leastways." He sat—sauced pralines sidling ice cream—on Kitty's armrest. "'Sides, availability's not the point." He propped his feet on Rogue's armrest, daring her to shy her gloved hand away. "All _femmes_ deserve the effort."

"Settle down back there," Scott said. "We're getting ready to land."

"Welcome back," Xavier said over the speakers. "I'll have Piotr ready quarters for our guests."

* * *

"Our _guests_, as you keep calling them, could've destroyed millions of dollars of equipment!"

"Forge, are they damaged?"

Forge wiped his hands on a rag that he shoved in his back pocket. The motion jiggled the individual cuffs—each with a blinking red light—on each of his wrists. The set had twins that were fit around his ankles, tucked beneath his jeans. He looked up to the duo by the broken section of the rim railing.

"This one," Forge said as he pointed to the metal and resin behemoth harnessed to the docking platform on which he stood, "Has a faint scorch mark on the shoulder rigging. A few others took hits from a few bullets. Superficial stuff, all of it, really. Replace a few armor plates, and they should be back up to par."

"See, Mr. Trask, your precious machines are fine. I, on the other hand, have lost a couple of my primary specimens and now have a very messy lab."

"Mutants are mutants. They're disposable. Leakage issues will be a chore, sure, but it's Major Danvers' disappearance, on the other hand, that will incite a bureaucratic nightmare. Washington is going to be all over this." He grit his teeth. "Damn your research, Essex! That's why they came here." His eyes narrowed. "You're just lucky the Sentinels weren't rigged up yet. That technology is top secret. Hell, Congress vetoed the project last year thanks to the stink that turncoat Senator Kelly made."

"Actually, it is _you—"_ Essex tapped his cane against Trask's chest (3). "—who is lucky."

The chrome headstock of the cane was a seamlessly molded sinister face that, frightening as it was, was less hackles-rising than the scientist's cold detachment.

Trask flinched at its touch. Ice up his spine.

"We may share this facility," Essex continued, but it is still _my_ research center. The cost of those machines is minimal compared to my genetic library. Irreplaceable, it is."

"Don't act like you aren't benefiting from this arrangement," Trask complained. "A lot of delicate resources conveniently rolled over to you when Stryker went under."

"It only makes sense that a scientist take over where Stryker left off." Essex tightly gripped the headstock, the tiny red diamond on the forehead peaking between his knuckles, and ground the tip against the floor. "Such work left solely in the hands of politicians and the military is irresponsible and dangerous. Perhaps, even insane."

"I'll be sure to share your high opinion of his policies," Trask threatened.

"I already have. How do you think I got this position?"

"Just keep a better hold on your mutants," Trask spat. "We wouldn't be in this mess if it weren't for that Dr. McCoy. Slimy miscreant slipped in under our noses like Forge did. They should all be as obvious as you made him."

Trask turned to leave, disgusted with it all. To a passing soldier, he grumbled, "And clean up this place. It's a disgrace. It's all a disgrace."

"Don't touch a thing," Essex told the soldier as he approached the rubble from the blown hydraulic doors. "Invaluable treasure often lurks in even the dirtiest of places."

Essex pushed a piece of the debris aside with the tip of his cane. Sure enough, a small spot of blood was there. And just askance of that, two entwined strands of hair, one brown and one white. What more could he discover with a microscope and some tweezers?

He glanced at the hidden security cameras. Wouldn't be hard for him match some of it to a face, a face to a name, a name to his generous hospitality…

"Get me some latex gloves," he requested with a tap of his cane.

* * *

Tap! Tap! Tap!

As if Xavier needed the action to know someone was there, the person continued her rude, incessant tapping. He'd known they were there before he'd even opened the Cerebro's doors after he severed the communication connection to the Blackbird. Refusing to be pushed around, Xavier took his usual time to completely disengage Cerebro and remove the helmet.

"Marrow, giving me a headache will in no way ingratiate me to meet with you any more quickly," Xavier said as he turned his wheelchair around and started rolling along the platform towards the entryway, and apparently, the small group of misfits congregated there.

Marrow tapped the dagger-like bone on the doorframe twice more for good measure.

"Enough, Sarah," Callisto told her vicious looking companion.

Both were mutants for sure, and though Callisto would not likely ever be described as beautiful or pretty in any manner, she wasn't grotesque and unfit for daylight public life like she claimed. The teenager Sarah, or Marrow, as she preferred to be called, however, was a sight to be seen. Bones randomly grew out at odd angles all over her body, including her face. If one looked closely enough, they could peer what would have been a very pretty face had it not been for the marring of the bone protrusions. At some point in their growth, she would break them off or pull them out and brandish them as weapons. In fact, the very bone she tapped against the doorframe was once sticking out of her arm. It was a painful mutation, and Marrow made the best of it by living up to her intimidating, menacing appearance with an equally jagged personality.

Two others rounded out the rag-tag group of visitors. A male, Masque, had pasty, bulbous, wrinkled features. His power allowed him to shape a person's skin like it was putty; yet he was unable do make his own appearance any more palatable. His bitter streak at that left a wake of many temporarily disfigured profiles. Callisto's remaining compatriot, Plague, was old and frail looking. However, if a person got on _her_ bad side he could find himself hacking up handfuls of black mucus and his body riddled with a slew of weeping sores.

"You really should call ahead, Callisto. I am a busy man and I doubt Storm will be available this evening."

"We'll wait," Callisto said.

"Better yet," Marrow's gravelly voice said as she advanced on Xavier, " We'll give her a reason to make time for us."

* * *

The Blackbird landed in the Institute hanger under the basketball court. The boarding ramp opened and let out Kitty and Bobby.

They froze, statue still.

Close behind them, Logan and Rogue escorted/carried Danvers, LeBeau and McCoy. The sight that greeted them had Logan easing out his blades. Nightcrawler teleported out to join them and was just as spooked. As Storm and Scott departed the jet, they saw what caused the odd reactions. A menacing set of rag-tags flanked their expected greeters, Xavier and Colossus.

Despite the weary concern of his X-Men, Xavier cordially suggested, "Kitty, Rogue, Bobby, could you bring Ms. Danvers to the med-lab and assist Colossus with getting her, Dr. McCoy, and Mister LeBeau situated for the night."

Callisto looked over the youngsters and the strangers and nodded her assent.

"Like being sent to the kids table at Christmas," Kitty murmured as they left.

Storm didn't wait for them to be gone before she asked, "What are you doing, Callisto?"

"We're graciously accepting the help you gloated about, Weather Witch," Callisto taunted sarcastically. She turned Xavier's face to show off Marrow's handiwork. A thin line of blood marked a superficial cut on his cheek. "Caliban's missing and you're going to find him."

"Nice friends you got, Storm," Logan said.

Instantly put off, Marrow stalked around Logan. "We are not her friends. _We_ are the Morlocks, Upworlder."

"They are from a community of mutants who reside in 'The Alley,'" Storm explained. "It's a section of tunnels connecting the subway with Central Park."

"Storm has been our liaison to them for some time now," Xavier said. "Callisto has refused the offer to join us here on several occasions."

"They believe their mutations are too grotesque to blend into society," Storm said.

"Pretty people like you wouldn't understand," Marrow said as she trailed her bone, dagger-like, weapon threateningly along Logan's shoulder.

"Back off, kid." Logan brushed her bone-dagger aside with his blades.

"Even your claws are pretty and shiny," Marrow scoffed viciously before moving for a closer look at Kurt. "You, though… Someone like you might understand."

"That's enough, Sarah," Storm chastised. It did no good.

"Marrow," Callisto warned. Marrow backed off to Callisto's side. "Caliban didn't just go on a vacation, Storm. Someone took him."

"I don't doubt that," Storm said. "I only fault how you ask for help. You didn't have to use threats."

"How long has he been missing?" Scott asked, striking to the point of the matter.

"Two days," Callisto supplied. "Leech, one of our youngest, was with him at the time. Caliban wouldn't have just up and left him alone like that."

Marrow stalked a slow, slow line to Storm. "That big round room is like Caliban's powers, right?" Menacing. "You can track mutants with it?" Threatening. "Maybe even incite fear in others like him too?" Knowing. "You will find him for us with it."

"I can't, but Xavier can," Storm corrected. "I already explained that to you."

"You told them about Cerebro?" Scott asked. Memories plagued him still. Plagued most of them still. "After what happened last year with—"

"To be trusted, you must trust as well," Storm advised. She glanced at Nightcrawler, the one who re-educated her of such things as trust and faith. To Callisto, she said, "We will find him, Callisto, and we will bring him back."

* * *

McCoy was of great use with getting Major Danvers hooked up to all the medical monitoring equipment. It was becoming more and more worrisome that she had yet to wake up.

A tiny crackly fizzle, a flick, and a spark; they could smell the cigarette smoke.

"I would request that you refrain from smoking in here," McCoy told Gambit.

"Guess I'll be heading outside, then," Remy replied, flashing that mischievous grin of his, and started for the exit.

"It is permissible in your room," Colossus informed him. He didn't get the point of Gambit's remark.

"Thanks, but no thanks. Now that I'm out of Essex's range, N'awlins be calling this ragin' Cajun home."

"You're not going anywhere, swamp rat," said Rogue. The don't-even-bother-trying retort smoothly rolled off her southern tongue, almost like an endearment.

"The professor can't be serious about giving him a room," Kitty piped in.

Colossus seemed confused. "Why not?"

"He attacked us, that's why," Bobby explained.

"He's sort of our prisoner," Kitty added. It was a mixture of adventurous excitement and awkward hesitancy.

One of Hank's eyebrows shot up above his glasses. "You have cells? I thought this was a school."

"Classrooms, yes; cells, no," Colossus answered.

Kitty snickered conspiratorially. "Does detention count?"

Hank frowned good-naturedly at her.

"Did Nightcrawler not attack the President?" Colossus said it as if it were so simple, so clear.

"That was _that _guy?" Remy sounded impressed, humored.

"And weren't you involved in Magneto's attempt to mutate the delegates at the U.N. summit, Rogue?"

Gambit whistled appreciatively, a different sort of 'whoa, Mama' than was usual for him.

"That's not the same, and you know it. I wasn't given a choice. Neither was Kurt." Rogue spun to Remy. "And why are you looking like the cat that got the canary?"

"Birds of a feather, chére."

"'The caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown, but longed for still, and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom.' Maya Angelou," Hank quoted, drawing attention back to him. Clarifying for the plebeians, he added, "He also had no choice."

Hank, through the windows of his own glasses, and Remy, through a different sort of singular veiled scope of his own, shared a glance, a connection of understanding the other's facet of a precious stone. Hank had polished his own opinion of Remy while behind Essex's cell door.

Remy broke the too revealing, penetrating look first. He pulled out a deck of playing cards and began shuffling, molasses nonchalance. He let Hank be the one to say it.

"You rescued him as much as you rescued me."

* * *

End Part One – 'Birds of a Feather'  
**Keep a look out for X-Men Rising, Part 02: "Fox in a Henhouse."

* * *

**_Edited/rewritten April 19, 2005  
Edited/rewritten April 27, 2006

* * *

_**Footnotes (links to pics, please check them out and comment ):**

(1) www(dot)deviantart(dot)com/deviation/31776199/  
"Sentinel Pit" made from scratch by me in Photoshop. I used a pic of a sculpted design of a Sentinel reported to be one of Singer's plans had he continued on the movies. See (2) for this referenced pic.  
**Accompaniment to the text:**  
PHOOM! This time, they all saw it—saw _them_.  
Purple. Blue. Clunky skeletal things glistening like wet bruises in the reflection of Scott's red optic blasts. Their red eyes _seemed_ about to fire a beam of some kind.

(2) www(dot)moviesonline(dot)ca/movie-gallery/albums/userpics/Xmen3-Sentient01(dot)JPG  
See (1). It's the sculpture design I based the sentinels from my pic (1) on.

(3) www(dot)deviantart(dot)com/deviation/32410309  
"Sinister Cane" made from scratch by me in Photoshop.  
**Accompaniment to the text:**  
The chrome headstock of the cane was a seamlessly molded sinister face that, frightening as it was, was less hackles-rising than the scientist's cold detachment.  
Trask flinched at its touch. Ice up his spine.  
…  
Essex tightly gripped the headstock, the tiny red diamond on the forehead peaking between his knuckles, and ground the tip against the floor.  
…  
"…Perhaps, even insane."

* * *

_Thank you for indulging. _


End file.
